What would you do?

[Navajo Joe]

Situation: Playing as Poland, taken Cairo by Crusade, Fatimids swarming like desert locusts, but do not want to besiege the city.
My Army, 5 Units of Missile Cavarly, 2 Light Cavarly, 1 Heavy Cavarly and 2 Generals, 2 Merc Crossbow, 8 Units of Infantry.

The Fatimids have sent two small armies to date into the region, sent out missile cavarly with 2 units of supporting infantry and young General, defeated them outright, they lost circa 800 men, me 25!
They have moved full stack, mainly infantry, not led by a General, little cavarly. My thought is to move out destroy them, before they attempt to besiege and/or joined by other armies. As half of my army is on horse I feel better to confront them on the desert, where I can deploy and operate to my advantage. I also figure that as they are not led by a General, they will rout easily, however there is 2000 men.
However it does mean that I will loose some infantry as my cavarly cannot pin them all down, I cannot afford to loose to many infantry, as there are three full stacks of Fatties holding out in the desert just west of Aqaba. They will at some point besiege the city, could recruit local mercs in Sudan Tribesmen, but they are not opposition to Spear Miltia, bloody hope they have not got any Tabaridiya or AL Haqa

So guys, over to you, how would you approach this scenario?

[Souka]

March out and meet them, if you use your cavalry right you can manage to kill them of and only lose around 200men. Doing this will probably buy you another 3-7 turns with no assault on the city.

[KillingMeSoftly]

I have to agree, you should ride out and crush them. If you don't, they'll likely stick around until they can overwhelm you. At the very least you can wear them down with your archers and then retreat, repeating, with absolute minimum casualties on your part. It will result in a technical defeat on your part each time, though.

[boss_tay]

Well, you should take out Dametia if the Garrison there is not heavy.
Then, you can start produce Castle troops.
Normally, in a Crusade targeting a city, I would take out at least one Castle next to it, then take the target city. By doing so, I can defend the newly conquered city.

[Loose Cannon]

An army with half of its units cavalry is always better in an open field. Without reinforcements you will lose all your units eventually as they send stack after stack to seige Cairo.

Where is your spy? You did bring one with you on the Crusade? You should know the makeup of the other Fatamid armies and nearby cities/castles. Gaza is usually better built up than Dametia and a better target if you can get there.

Or you could do a "scorched earth" drive-burn Cairo to the ground, head to Alexandria, capture it & burn it down, then leave by boat. Sell all buildings from both cities and the AI will never recover. Bring your army back to somewhere it can be usefull and retrainable.

You can always call another Crusade later.

[gta_140]

I would level all the buildings, hop in a boat, and go back to Poland. That or trade it to someone.

[Marques_of_Cadiz]

Well I was thinking about future games to encourage the Creative Assembly staff. I am convinced that they should start again in the origins, in the beginnings of the ancient history.
As far as I known there are a lot of very good games to play with the 1st and 2nd World War. On the other hand if Creative Assembly did not have many lights to improve their own failures I do not believe that they could be able to create a new game better than, for example, call of duty.

However it is probable that Creative want to do something with his wonderful British Empire (in the nineteenth century). This time of colonialism, wars and revolutions, in America and all over the world could be interesting for all. Wars like the Philippines, Cuba, Crimea, the Opium War in China, and Boers in Africa.etc
It seems that they could get a real and interesting British Empire game.

Anyway and definitely what I would like to see is come back to antiquity, with a new game maybe called: Mesopotamia, "the origin of all civilizations". A new game with more diplomacy, builder cities included for improve the cities, and creation new colonies, more history settings between the battles etc, etc, This game could have two very interesting expansions: A. Egypt and B. classical Greece. If they really work well these games with new maps, a new graphics engine and more illustration and historical setting would be a marvellous success!

Also a new Rome could follow these games. I think that this is the future for Creative Assembly.

They only just have to start improving the current TW Empire. It is a very simple way to keep loyal customers and not spiting directly in ours face. Please fix the mistakes in TW Empire or you will lose many costumers.

Thank you.

[Kazuhiro]

Dont take a city if you dont have a way out. I trade Cairo with the papal sates to improve realtion and get out of holy land. It can be really fun to cause mayhem over there,but you cant get any reinforcements over there so they'll probably beat you eventually.
Trade cairo, hire mercenary ship, take nicosia/rhodes/iraklion

[JorisofHolland]

You should either
bring in many reinforcements and prepare to fight to the death, take everything within range and crush everyone who comes to close
or abandon/trade the settlement and return home, where you can use the troops with less risk.

[JorisofHolland]

Yes, call a crusade and bring in huge reinforcement armies, if you don't want to abandon it's the only way, as only Italians have powerfull militias. This is also your advantage: take their castles and they will fall, no matter who you fight.

[Navajo Joe]

Hi chaps,

Thanks for all your ideas and thoughts, they were some very good ideas, that I had thought of, but will do?
So, what did I do?
My army held up in Cairo, could not travel any direction as the Fatties had blocked me off. To the east were two stacks and one south blocking the escape westwards. So I came out to fight, I sent my Missile Cavarly forward, they expended one third of their missile on reducing the Fatties Javelinmen, bigger danger to my heavy horse and infantry. Once they were thinned out, my missile cavarly 5 units expended rest of their ammo on the the left flank and then moved behind them. My 2 units of Crossbow marched forward unloaded there ammo into the enemy centre. As they finished, my 6 units infantry moved forward, outnumbered by 12 units. As the battle lines hit my General, with 2 Heavy Cavarly and 2 Light Cavarly, hit the left flank that crumbled immediately, the centre routed, but right flank held for a little while and ran for their lives. Of the 2,500 Fatties, 100 escaped, 1200 prisoners, 1200 killed and me 135 casualties, mainly infantry, an heroic victory indeed.
On end turn a Fattie General with stack as moved in, with the other stack moving westwards towards Alexandria. His army consists of Infantry and Javelins, no cavarly, lets do it again, but this time special care with the Fattie General. I will use two of my specialists, my Druzhina Aldari Mounted Bowmen, very effective against armour and Piast Nobles with Javelins, his days are numbered. I will need to keep an eye on situation and use your ideas, I really want to keep Cairo, if I can

[Tyrenia]

If you're not using Real Recruitment, I would suggest building up a stack inside Cairo for defence, then taking out the region's most well developed castle, usually Gaza. If that doesn't distract the buzzing Fatimid stack, and it attacks an undermanned Cairo, attempt to defend. You win, Fatimids gone. You lose, you now have a good troop producing centre to take back the city. It's a win-win.

Unless of course you want to run away. Then give it to the Pope. But setting up satelite kingdoms is fun. Kinda like the beginning of the game all over again. It provides a great challenge, something which I enjoy.

EDIT: Damn it... too late

[JorisofHolland]

So you chose to fight - I would have done so too - but what are your plans? Will you take Gaza or keep sending reinforcemnts from across the sea? That's probally a big problem, unless you have a Mediteranian/Black Sea port.

[BohemianHussar]

I was at the same pt about 80 turns ago in my campaign. (Egypt is still alive in my game but no longer controls the coast of the middle east thanks to consistent crusades and my templar allies)

If anything Id take Nicosia off the coast as a head quarters (egypt in my game had conquered it so I lucked out of having to enter war with the byzantines) and use that to repair your troops and regather your army. Id recommend selling the crusade territories as well or give them to the templars or KOJ/ papal states in order to gain an ally (if you choose to give to the former) or improve your papal standing.

In the long run for poland, fighting a war on egypt's land will turn into a war of attrition unless you have a castle to fall back too. Id recommend gaza as well but the problem with gaza is your still in egypts main regions and thus should expect multiple stacks coming your way.

If anything, take Acre if its not in KOJ or templars hands, your close enough to your allies then to have them hopefully come to your aid, and its port is closer to Nicosia incase you need to fall back to the island.

Nicosia though is pretty much the greatest haven for a crusading army though. Usually it upgrades fast and starts somewhat built up. Just make sure to keep a decent garrison to fend off egyption landing parties, and have a small fleet in the area to fend off the egyptian navy.

Lastly do what ever you can to keep your cavalry alive (the piast nobles mostly), my greatest problem out there was for some reason none of the stables were that built up (I went crusading pretty early) so I had to rely on mostly the mounted crossbowmen which made battles rather slow when I decided to shoot at the flanks of the masses of militia the Fatamid like to send at me.

[Halbard]

what would chuck norris do, that is the question

[aduellist]

^Think you posted in the wrong forum, matey!

At any rate, if you're going to hang around in Egypt, you need to take Alexandria and Damietta ASAP. Either call another Crusade on one or the other at the earliest possible moment or assemble another army, bite the bullet and march them through whoever's south of you to the Med or Adriatic, hire some merc galleys and get some more troops there. At least that's what I would do. Not sure what Chuck would do, though...

[Navajo Joe]

Morning chaps,
I sent my up and coming General age 16, with the army to take on the Fatimid Stack, lying east of the city. It was a rerun of the previous battle, although the Fatties held the high ground,. However they were coaxed from their position into a valley where a slaughter took place. My missile cavarly fired from high ground into the valley, with X-bows providing fire within. Hence they were in a deadly crossfire, which resulted in the destruction of the stack. I lost 115 men, mainly missile cavarly this time as Desert archers, caused some casualties.
However on end of turn Cairo was besieged by two stacks, totalling 5000 men, versus my 1200, oh ......!
So, if we live we are getting the hell out of there, its about 5 turns until next Crusade called, but we shall see. If you are thing why did I not escape after the previous battle, well the truth is I want to hold Cairo and besides I would not met the coast, before they would jump on me.

[RollingWave]

sell / give city to whoever's richer, the pope or the Fatamids , hire a boat, and run back to Poland

[Akolythos]

I disagree with the poster above me. Hold that city. Like a boss.

[JorisofHolland]

Sally forth and kill them right away. If you're lucky the first army has fallen before the second arrives. As your army is 50% cavalry, it's the only tactic that makes sense now. Unless you have some pikes, supporting units (common spears or better) and good archers. But as you are playing Poland, I doubt it.